2009-2014 Cadillac CTS-V General Discussion Discussion, Actual Cadillac CTS production numbers for 2009, 2010 and 2011 in Cadillac CTS-V Series Forum - 2009-2014; Per Cadillac: assist@cadillac.com
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In response to your inquiry regarding the production numbers, we have listed below the available information:
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NOTE: these numbers are all inclusive, and do not differentiate between V series or transmissions, etc.

I'd approximate CTSV production to be less than 10% of the numbers above (2009 CTSV production was approximately 3500 from other sources). I'd also assume 85% of all vehicles to be automatic transmissions.

Re: Actual Cadillac CTS production numbers for 2009, 2010 and 2011

Originally Posted by RippyPartsDept

I think manual trans builds are probably even less than your estimate. Or the autos are more prevalent than you estimate.

I'm sure that my estimates are high, but since most of us will do a straight conversion for wagons, etc - I figure its best to be cautious just in case a bunch of people ordered manual wagons for the novelty or something.

But yeah, 10% might be more realistic I just have nothing to support it.

Re: Actual Cadillac CTS production numbers for 2009, 2010 and 2011

Great numbers. Now if only we had the actual V numbers. GM releases the CTS numbers in aggregate, not differentiating between body types and V-series, so this is the first time we've seen these numbers.

Re: Actual Cadillac CTS production numbers for 2009, 2010 and 2011

Originally Posted by neuronbob

Great numbers. Now if only we had the actual V numbers. GM releases the CTS numbers in aggregate, not differentiating between body types and V-series, so this is the first time we've seen these numbers.

No 2012 or 2013 breakdowns?

The heavily accented Cadillac Customer Service rep was reporting the numbers that she had. She specifically mentioned that 2012 and `13 numbers have not been released yet. I'm sure the month-by-month list, broken down by color, trans, options and body style are sitting on a mid-level exec's desk somewhere, but of course because of the low numbers and niche market they won't be released for years.

Nonetheless, I was flabbergasted at the remarkably low number of wagons produced en total: 9.9% in 2010 (first year of production) and dropping to under 3% the second year... Less than 1650 TOTAL (CTS/CTSV) wagons for 2011? That's crazy.

Recalling my post from the other thread on production numbers, it looks more and more plausible that less than 2,000 total CTSV Wagons will be built, with only a fraction of those being manual transmission vehicles. I do expect the 2013 year to have a relative increase in CTSV numbers, since we all thought it was the end of the line... but even with a 50% increase in CTSV Wagon sales year over year accounting for the enthusiasts, you're talking maybe a hundred additional units if you're generous.

After all, the Motor Trend video I linked to (other thread) stated only 447 V Wagons were made over two years (likely `10 and `11 model years) - so out of 5189 total Wagons, 447 were V series... or about 8.6% of all wagons in those two years were CTSV's and likely dropping in popularity for the following years. Thus, I expect 2012 to be a low numbers year comparable to 2011; and `13 is anyone's guess but I'd expect it also to be rather low overall for CTSV sales given the CTS line was declining significantly (as in -43% YoY) in popularity relative to the new models rolling out which are usurping the overall volume of Cadillac growth.

To recap: if what we know is true... less than 10% of all Wagons are V's of any color or transmission. Extrapolate down to manual wagons... we're all going to be rich when we roll our manual transmission Unicorns through Mecum in a few years!

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Here's some completely made-up numbers I'm playing with.

Total CTS units of any variant: 60K in 2009, then 40K, then 58K in 2011, we'll say 50K in 2012 and we know there was a 43% drop for 2013 - or around maybe 35K units for 2013, which gives us approximately 243,000 units total production - and I think my approximations are going to prove rather generous for the later year volume. I'll assume the `14 model year for CTSV's is so minute as to be a rounding error (with no CTS production to account for).

CTSV (any style) seems to be less than 10% of that - or around 24,000 total best-case scenario (which I expect will be very optimistic, since I'm using the 2009 percentage and first-year sales always run strong). Perhaps 7-8% total would be more realistic, or around 18,500 total CTSV's. The vast majority of these will be sedans (80+ %). Coupes are also a strong seller, but I expect significant declines for 2012MY and later.

For us Wagon enthusiasts, using the known values in my first post, CTS/CTSV wagons are 5.3% of all CTS/CTSV production from my first post - or 12,800 total CTS/CTSV wagons for all production years combined.

Given the CTSV ratios (again, likely markedly less than 8.6% of all wagons produced given the decline in sales over a multi-year run), I wind up with a CTSV wagon estimation of around 1,100 units.

So I think my first guess of 1200-1500 Wagons is probably pretty close and well within my approximations above. Even if we say 30% of all CTSV wagons are manuals - which is an absurd number - there are going to be around 500 manual CTSV wagons (or less) of any option level ever built. I really think the total number of manual tranmission wagons will be less than 15% (under 250 vehicles)* , because at the end of the day very few people have the desire or the means to buy a slush-box wagon for daily-driver duty.

* Remember, this post is just me taking heavily extrapolated guesses based on approximations of the first post.

To make it even crazier, VMoose noted that the Stealth Blue wagon he was looking at was going to be a 1 of 49 vehicle. And that Glacier Blue Vagon someone bought - will it be a one-off car? :O

Re: Actual Cadillac CTS production numbers for 2009, 2010 and 2011

Good information above. I bet Cadillac's competitors have done the same number crunching as Random did. Still don't see why the secret with production numbers anyway. I can understand keeping it a secret the first couple of years, but the CTS-V has shown to be very successful and other OEM's have already responded in like with their models. Don't see the need to be so secretive anymore.

Re: Actual Cadillac CTS production numbers for 2009, 2010 and 2011

If someone was motivated enough, it wouldn't be terribly hard to go through the dealer advertisements on various websites where they show all of the active dealer listings with VIN, color, transmission, etc.

Having someone spend just a few hours every month recording the basic info attached to a VIN would give you a pretty accurate picture of national sales with very few errors (as the VIN could be used to remove duplicate sales) and you'd be able to break it down in rather good detail. This is something that could easily be coded for with software depending on the websites used... heck, it probably already is.

So I think Cadillac's pursuit of secrecy is largely futile given the low numbers, the easy access of information online and of course the heavily advertised online listings with VIN, etc that can be quickly culled by someone motivated to do so.

Re: Actual Cadillac CTS production numbers for 2009, 2010 and 2011

I pretty much agree with all of that. Despite the fact that I am aware of three V wagons in Vegas alone, plus a lot of people here on the board seem to be buying V wagons, I think it's definitely within the realm of possibility that there are less than 300 manual V wagons out there, total. I ran some made up numbers like that last year, and came up with similar results.

On a related tangent, I have a friend that somehow got access to BMW's internal records for production numbers, and he learned that he actually owns a one-off 330i - it's the only one in the country with a manual transmission, his color/interior color combo, the ZHP option pack and the other options it has. I thought that was cool, I'd love to be able to see the actual numbers for our cars.